Sunday, January 8, 2012

Why do Muslims despise Jews so much?

According to the Merriam Webster online dictionary, the term ‘Zionist’ is defined as “An international movement originally for the establishment of a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine and later for the support of modern Israel”. So when I said in my last post that I have always been a Zionist, I meant that I have always supported Israel and the Jews, and I am sure my statement was pretty clear. Then where did this come from?

Kai56 | January 6, 2012 8:54 PM | Reply

come on you have got to be kidding me
jew and zionist not same thing you dumb bitch

What do you mean by that, Kai56? Can you please be more specific why you rendered me with such delightful adjectives?

I have an Egyptian colleague who recently went on a trip to Europe with his family. During one of the train journeys, his 7-year-old daughter got friendly with a similar aged American girl on the train, and then both the parents also introduced themselves since they had a few hours more to go. After a few minutes of casual conversation, my colleague found out that they were Jewish Americans. According to his own admission, he said “Shakila, as soon as I found out that they were Jewish, I had this sudden urge to push them all out of the train”. To say that I was shocked beyond belief is an understatement. I just asked him, “Why, Ahmed? Were they not nice people?” To that he replied: “They seemed nice in the beginning before I found out their true identity, but once I did, I just could continue making idle conversation with them, nor could I let my daughter play with their girl, so I just pulled my wife and kids away from them and moved to a different compartment of the train.” So as you can see, this is the kind of hatred that many Muslims, especially Arabs, harbor in their hearts against the Jews. Why do they despise them so much that they don’t even recognize them as human beings? Well, of course, the answer lies in the book of all evils, the Holy Quran… Here is a snapshot of what the revered & sacred book of the Muslims says about their worst enemies.

Qur'an 2:61

"Humiliation and wretchedness were stamped on the Jews and they were visited with Allah's wrath."

Qur'an 4:44

"Have you not considered those to whom a portion of the Book has been given? They traffic in error and desire that you should go astray. But Allah has full knowledge of your enemies. Of the Jews there are those who displace words from their (right) places, saying, 'We hear and we disobey' with a twist of their tongues they slander Faith.... Allah has cursed them for disbelief."

Qur'an 4:47

"O you People of the Book to whom the Scripture has been given, believe in what We have (now) revealed, confirming and verifying what was possessed by you, before We destroy your faces beyond all recognition, turning you on your backs, and curse you as We cursed the Sabbath-breakers, for the decision of Allah Must be executed."

Qur'an 4:160

"For the iniquity of the Jews We made unlawful for them certain (foods) in that they hindered many from Allah's Way, that they took usury, though they were forbidden, and that they devoured men's wealth on false pretenses, We have prepared for those among them who reject [Islamic] Faith a painful doom."

Qur'an 5:59

"Say: 'People of the Book! Do you disapprove of us for no other reason than that we believe in Allah, and the revelation that has come to us and that which came before?' Say: 'Shall I point out to you something much worse than this by the treatment it received from Allah? Those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom He transformed into apes and swine."

Qur'an 2:64

"But you [Jews] went back on your word and were lost losers. So become apes, despised and hated. We made an example out of you."

Qur'an 33:26

"Allah made the Jews leave their homes by terrorizing them so that you killed some and made many captive. And He made you inherit their lands, their homes, and their wealth. He gave you a country you had not traver

Qur'an 59:14

"The Jews are devoid of sense. There is a grievous punishment awaiting them. Satan tells them not to believe so they will end up in Hell."

Qur'an 4:55

"Sufficient for the Jew is the Flaming Fire!"

Qur'an 88:1

"Has the narration reached you of the overwhelming (calamity)? Some faces (all disbelievers, Jews and Christians) that Day, will be humiliated, downcast, scorched by the burning fire, while they are made to drink from a boiling hot spring."

Qur'an 59:14

"They [Jews] will not fight against you save in fortified townships. Their hostility and hatred amongst themselves is strong: you would think they were united, but their hearts they are divided. That is because these [Jews] are a people devoid of sense."

Qur'an 5:13

"But because of their breach of their covenant We cursed the Jews, and made their hearts grow hard. They change the words from their (right) places [the illiterate prophet pronounced] and forget and abandon a good part of the message that was sent them. Nor will you cease to find deceit in them. And because of their breaking their covenant We have cursed them. They altered words from their context and they neglected a portion of the message they were reminded of."

Qur'an 5:41

"Or it be among the Jews, men who will listen to any lie. They change the context of the words from their (right) times and places.... For them there is disgrace in this world, and in the Hereafter a heavy punishment.""

Qur'an 5:42

"They are fond of listening to falsehood, of devouring anything forbidden; they are greedy for illicit gain!"

Qur'an 5:44

"It was We who revealed the Torah. By its standard the prophets judged the Jews, and the prophets bowed (in Islam) to Allah's will, surrendering. For the rabbis and priests: to them was entrusted the protection of Allah's Scripture Book; they were witnesses of it. Therefore fear not men, but fear Me, and sell not My revelations for a miserable price."

Qur'an 5:64

"The Jews say: 'Allah's hands are fettered.' Be their hands tied up and be they accursed for the blasphemy they utter. Nay, both His hands are widely outstretched, giving [Muslims Jewish booty] as He pleases. Amongst them we have placed enmity and hatred till the Day of Doom. Every time they kindle the fire of war, Allah does extinguish it. But they strive to do mischief on earth."

Qur'an 98:1

"Those among the People of the Book, who disbelieve and are idolaters, would never have been freed from their false religion if the Clear Proofs had not come to them. An Apostle of Allah came reading out of hallowed pages.... They were commanded to serve Allah exclusively, fulfilling their devotional obligations, and paying the zakat. Surely the unbelievers and idolaters from the People of the Book will abide in the Fire of Hell. They are the worst of creatures."

Qur'an 5:78

"Curses were pronounced on the unbelievers, the Children of Israel who rejected Islam, by the tongues of David and of Jesus because they disobeyed and rebelled."

Qur'an 5:80

"You see many of them allying themselves with the unbelieving infidels. Vile indeed are their souls. Allah's wrath is on them, and in torment will they abide."

Qur'an 5:81

"If only they had believed in Allah, in the Prophet, and in what had been revealed to him."

Qur'an 5:82

"You will find the Jews and disbelievers [defined as Christians in 5:73] the most vehement in hatred for the Muslims."

Qur'an 2:59

"We sent a plague upon the Jews from heaven, for their evil-doing."

Qur'an 17:7

"We shall rouse Our (Muslim) slaves to shame and ravage you (Jews), disfiguring your faces. They will enter the Temple as before and destroy, laying to waste all that they conquer."

Qur'an 59:14

"They are a divided people devoid of sense. There is a grievous punishment awaiting them. Satan tells them not to believe so both of them will end up in Hell."

Qur'an 59:2

"It was He [Allah] who drove the [Jewish] People of the Book from their [Medina] homes and into exile. They refused to believe. You did not think that they would go away. And they imagined that their settlement would protect them against Allah. But Allah's [actually Muhammad's] (torment) came at them from where they did not suspect and terrorized them. Their homes were destroyed. So learn a lesson O men who have eyes. This is My warning. Had Allah not decreed the expulsion of the Jews, banishing them into the desert, He would certainly have punished them in this world, and in the next they shall taste the torment of Hell Fire."

Qur'an 2:40

"O Children of Israel, remember the favors I bestowed on you. So keep My Covenant so that I fulfil your covenant. Fear Me. And believe in what I sent down, confirming and verifying the Scripture which you possess already."

Qur'an 2:41

"Be not the first to deny or sell My Verses for a small price; and fear Me, and Me alone." [Another translation reads:] "Part not with My Revelations for a trifling price, getting a small gain by selling My Verses."

Qur'an 2:43

"[Jews] Perform prayer; pay the zakat tax; bow down and prostrate yourself with Ar-Raki'un (the obedient bowers). You read, recite, and study the Scripture. Why don't you understand? Nay, seek [Islamic prostration] prayer: It is indeed hard, heavy, and exacting, except for those who obey in submission."

Qur'an 2:59

"The [Jewish] transgressors changed and perverted the word from that which had been spoken to them to a word distorted; so We sent a plague upon them from heaven, for their evil-doing."

Qur'an 2:61

"Humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon the Jews and they were visited with wrath from Allah. That was because they disbelieved Allah's Proofs, Signs and Verses and killed the prophets. They disobeyed and rebelled."

Qur'an 2:64

"But you [Jews] went back on your word and were lost losers. You know that you have broken the sanctity of the Sabbath, so We said: 'Become monkeys despised and hated.' We made this punishment an example and a warning for those who fear Allah."

Qur'an 2:79

"But woe to the Jews who fake the Scriptures and say, 'This is from God,' so that they might earn some profit thereby.' And woe to them for what their hands have written, and woe to them for what they earn from it.'"

Qur'an 2:80

"Yet they (Jews) say: 'The Fire will not touch us for more than a few days...but they are enclosed in error and are inmates of Hell."

Qur'an 2:85

"Do you [Jews] believe a part of the Book and reject a part? There is no reward for them who so act but disgrace in the world, and on the Day of Doom, the severest of punishment...their torment will never decrease!"

Qur'an 2:89

"The Book was sent to them (the Jews) by Allah verifying and confirming what had been revealed to them already (the Torah and Gospel). They used to pray for victory over the unbelievers - and even though they recognized it when it came to them, they renounced it. The curse of Allah be on those who deny!"

Qur'an 2:101

"When there came a messenger from Allah confirming what was with them, a party of the people of the (Torah and Gospel) Scripture Book fling away the Book of Allah, tossing it behind their backs, as if they did not know!"

Qur'an 2:109

"Quite a number of the People of the Book wish they could turn you [Muslim] (people) back to infidelity after you have believed [submitted], through selfish envy, even after the Truth has become manifest to them. Indulge them until Allah issues his orders."

Qur'an 59:2

"It was Allah who drove the (Jewish) People from their [Yathrib] homes and into exile. They refused to believe. They imagined that their strongholds would protect them against Allah. But Allah's Torment came at them from where they did not suspect. He terrorized them. Their homes were destroyed. So learn a lesson. This is My warning. Had I not decreed the expulsion of the Jews, banishing them to the desert, I would have punished them. They shall taste the torment of Hell Fire." Qur'an 59:4 "That is because they resisted Allah and His Messenger. If any one resists Allah, verily Allah is severe in Punishment."

Qur'an 59:6

"What Allah gave as booty to His Messenger, He has taken away from the Jews. Allah gives His Messenger Lordship over whom He will. Whatever booty Allah has given to Muhammad and taken away from the (Jewish) people of the townships, belongs to Allah and to His Apostle."

Qur'an 59:14

"The Jews will not unite and fight against you except from behind walls. They hate themselves. You would think they were united, but their hearts are divided. That is because these [Jews] are a people devoid of sense. Like those who recently preceded them [the Meccans at Badr], they [the Jews who were just sent into the desert to die] have tasted the evil result of their conduct. And for them a grievous punishment."

Qur'an 59:16

"They [the Jews] are like Satan when he tells man, 'Not to believe,' When (man) denies, Satan says, 'I have nothing to do with you. I fear Allah, the Lord of men and jinn!'"

Qur'an 59:17

"Both [Jews and Satan] will go into the Fire of Hell, dwelling therein forever. Such is the reward of the Zalimun (disbelievers and polytheists)."

Qur'an 62:5

"The likeness of those who are entrusted with the Taurat (Torah), who subsequently failed in those (obligations), is that of an ass which carries huge books (but understands them not). Wretched is the likeness of folk who deny the Verses of Allah."

Qur'an 62:6

"Say: 'You Jews! If you think that you are friends to Allah, to the exclusion of (other) men, then desire death, if you are truthful!' But never will they long (for death), because of what their hands have done before them! Allah knows well the polytheists! Say: 'The Death from which you flee will truly overtake you.'"

Qur'an 3:65

"You People of the Book! Why dispute you about Abraham, when the Law and the Gospel were not revealed till after him? Have you no understanding? Ah! You are those who fell to disputing (even) in matters of which you had some knowledge! But why dispute in matters of which you have no knowledge? It is Allah Who knows, and you who know not!"

Qur'an 3:67

"Abraham was not a Jew nor yet a Christian; but he was a true Muslim, surrendered to Allah (which is Islam), and he joined not gods with Allah."

Qur'an 3:77

"As for those who sell for a small price the covenant and faith they owe to Allah and their own plighted word for a small price, they shall have no portion in the Hereafter. Nor will Allah speak to them or look at them on the Day of Judgment, nor will He cleanse them: They shall have a grievous torment, a painful doom. There is among them a section who distort the Book with their tongues. (As they read) you would think it is from the Book, but it is not from the Book; and they say, 'That is from God,' but it is not from Allah: It is they who tell a lie against Allah, and (well) they know it!"

Qur'an 3:84

"Say (Muhammad): 'We believe in Allah and that which is revealed to us and that which was revealed unto Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob and the tribes [of Israel], and in (the Books) given to Moses, Jesus, and the prophets, from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and unto Him we have surrendered, bowing our will (in Islam).'"

Qur'an 3:85

"If anyone desires a religion other than Islam (Surrender), never will it be accepted of him; and in the Hereafter He will be in the ranks of those who are losers." Qur'an 3:87 "Of such the reward is that on them (rests) the curse of Allah, of His angels, and of all men, all together. In that will they dwell; nor will their penalty of doom be lightened."

Qur'an 33:26

"Allah took down the People of the Scripture Book. He cast terror into their hearts. Some you slew, and some you made prisoners. And He made you heirs of their lands, their houses, and their goods, giving you a land which you had not traversed before." [Version two:] "And He drove the People of the Scripture down from their homes and cast panic into their hearts. Some you killed, and you made some captive. And He caused you to inherit their farms, houses, wealth, and land you have not trodden."

These are just a few of the verses in the Quran which depict the Jews as a sub human species. There are a lot more such verses about them, as well as about the Christians, the Sabians (not sure what that really means) the pagans, the Zoroastrians... In fact, according to the Quran and Mohammed or Allah (they are one and the same, as everyone knows), Muslims are supposed to hate everyone and everything that is not Muslim, but Jews are on the top of that hate list. Do you know why? It is pretty simple, actually. They are smart, intelligent people and they did not buy Mo's cock-and-bull story about some angel coming down and giving him the message from God and making him a prophet. He just could not digest the fact that no matter how hard he tried to sell his story, the Jews were not buying it. Period.. So how did he retaliate? He got his Allah to send down derogatory verses against the Jews, and unfortunately his followers were dumb enough to believe that the kind and merciful God would actually hate the very own people he created. How could God say such cruel things about his most special people? His chosen ones? If only Mo's followers had a little more common sense, but alas, for the last 14 centuries, Muslims are blinded by the hatred and rage, which has been absorbed into their very souls against the Jews. The only way to overcome that is to liberate oneself from the evil clutches of Islam.

168 comments:

I realize after leaving Islam, that I had deliberately skipped the horrifying verses such as these, and focused on reading the 'good' verses to keep believing.

I have always known the verses about Jews being Evil... for some reason they saw it important to teach them to us from a very young age at school. They required that we learn them by heart to pass some tests, and we did.

Never did I realize, though, how MANY these verses were. Now that you collect them together in one post, I am shocked at the quantity of such hateful verses.

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds,the Beneficent, the Merciful.Master of the Day of Judgment,Thee (alone) we worship; Thee (alone) we ask for help.Show us the straight path,The path of those whom Thou hast favoured; Not the (path) of those who earn Thine anger [Jews] nor of those who go astray [Christians].

"(Not (the way) of those who earned Your anger, nor of those who went astray) meaning guide us to the straight path [Islam]...help us to avoid the path of those whom Allah is angry with, whose intentions are corrupt, who know the truth, yet deviate from it. Also, help us avoid the path of those who were led astray, who lost the true knowledge and, as a result, are wandering in misguidance, unable to find the correct path...These two paths are the paths of the Christians and Jews, a fact that the believer should beware of so that he avoids them...the Jews abandoned practicing the religion, while the Christians lost the true knowledge. This is why `anger' descended upon the Jews, while being described as `led astray' is more appropriate of the Christian...We should also mention that both the Christians and the Jews have earned the anger and are led astray, but the anger is one of the attributes more particular of the Jews..."

"...(Not of those who earn Thine anger), not the religion of the Jews who earned Your anger, whom You forsook and whose hearts You did not protect until they became complaisant. (Nor of those who go astray), nor the religion of the Christians who erred from Islam..."

"...not [the path] of those against whom there is wrath, namely, the Jews, and nor of those who are astray, namely, the Christians. The subtle meaning implied by this substitution is that the guided ones are neither the Jews nor the Christians...

Zionism and Judaism are not synonyms. Some Jews are not Zionists, and you don't need to be a Jew to be a Zionist. I'm not Jewish, and I fully support Israel as a Jewish state, and I go all the way, including Judea and Samaria and a unified, Jewish Jerusalem, which I believe would make a "Radical Zionist"

"So how did he retaliate? He got his Allah to send down derogatory verses against the Jews"

I know that there is some doubts about the existence of Muhammad, but for me things like that confirm the veracity of him.

Muhammad was way too petty, vindictive and greedy to be a fictional character to build a Religion around.

The Koran affirms that a group of Jews were changed by Allah into apes for not respecting the Sabbath.

First of all Abraham,Isaac and Jacob/Israel have never,never observed the Sabbath because Mosaic Law did not exist in their time.It is only with Moses that the Sabbath was made a holy day,it is part of the ten commandments.Therefore the incident in the Koran happened after the Jews left Egypt.

It is in:

Chapter 7:163-166

Chapter 2:63-66

Chapter 5:59-60

The Logical Consequence

We have the following situation:

1.There are apes and pigs that exist today.

2.Some Jews were changed by Allah into apes and pigs more than 3,000 years ago.

3.Those same apes and pigs,who before were Jews,have in turn had descendants,other pigs and apes.By logic,there are millions of apes and pigs in the world that are the descendants of Jews.

ALSO CHECK OUT

"Doubts about Allah in the Koran being the Best of Planners and that his Idea of Tricking People is Good"

While it is true that not all Jews are Zionists, progressives have blurred that line in order to be antisemetic without actually showing their hatred openly. So, instead of hating Jews, the instead say they hate Zionists (bit mean the same thing).

As far as Kai56 is concerned, anyone who would resort to calling you that deserves no answer from you. If he can not be civil, don't waste your time with him.

This was a very beautiful post you've written and I appreciate deeply your writing it. It should be noted that what you have written is exactly why there can never be peace between the Arabs and Jews. Any "peace process" the United States (or anyone else) tries to negotiated is a fool's errand. Islam teaches about a hudna, which is basically giving Muslims permission to lie and cheat if it furthers their goals.

Shayne, it's true that not all Jews are Zionists. It's also true that not all progressives are anti-Semitic. I would guess that most "progressives" are not anti-Semitic. A substantial minority of them are to some degree or other.

Shakila, you said - "How could God say such cruel things about his most special people? His chosen ones?"

Jews are a lot smarter than the Muslims, because they figured that hate consumes one's energy to an extent you are unable to see wood for the trees. That person gets wrapped in it. More than 95% Jews that I met are grand people, they don't hate anyone. I can't agree they are the chosen ones, thats like believing MoSlums have an exclusive rights to the heavens.

You said "The only way to overcome that is to liberate oneself from the evil clutches of Islam."

I am very impressed and really hopeful to read this statement from an X-Muslim who were enlightened by herself. This is the only exit from the continuous vile status of the Muslim minds. The reason I agree, Pedo-Mo had an agenda and an axe to grind because he was completely obsessed with sex and other peoples wealth. To fulfill his obsession, he concocted all kinds of cock&bull stories and compiled them into the Quran. He was perhaps the most fearing psychologist. He made his followers fear about him for 1400 years and beyond! That kind of grip on people’s mind is something a modern person cannot imagine. He killed others for their wealth and sex . He hated Jews because it was them he was mostly robbing and they resisted. It is as simple as ABC if the Moslums care to look at things objectively - judging by the response from some of the resident trolls here, it is unlikely that is going to happen generally any time soon. Mo’s vise on the Moslims is so strong, even the Western education doesn’t appear to make much different. I know several so called educated Moslims can’t figure out simple things if it conflicts with Mo’s dictates.

Great to read your web-log, one more human being exited the vises of the evil. No matter what, do not hate Muslims or any others (I think you are that type anyway!) - because you are out of it. You already know that can absorb you into evil thoughts. Move on into the beautiful wide world. It is yours to enjoy for the rest of your life without restrictions. Islam will fail - no doubt about that.

Kai was confused or was just posting a hostile knee-jerk response without first reading carefully what he was responding to. Liberated did not assume a Zionist had to be a Jew (or vice versa). Kai seems to have falsely attributed that assumption to Liberated.

(An alternative interpretation is that Kai was accusing Liberated of being a Jew--which is also a tactic sometimes used by Islamic supremacists against anyone who has anything critical to say about Islam--even though Liberated has expressed at least a leaning toward Christianity).

Liberated's collection of quotes from the Quran certainly conveys the book's overall intense hostility toward the Jews, and enumerates a number of the libels against the Jews.

I haven't time to check many of them, but some of the quotes look a little off, as if they are (at least in part) actually paraphrases, and at least one had a parenthetical insertion that I think is not correct. For example, Liberated's quote of Q 17:7 is as follows:

"We shall rouse Our (Muslim) slaves to shame and ravage you (Jews), disfiguring your faces. They will enter the Temple as before and destroy, laying to waste all that they conquer."

My reading of the context indicates that the insertion "Muslim" (in the sense of someone who believes in the Quran, Muhammad, and Allah) is not correct. The passage from which this verse is quoted is describing things that happened to the Jews historically, long before Muhammad's Islam. Mainstream tafsirs such as those of Ibn Abbas, Ibn Kathir, the Jalalayn, and Maududi agree on this point.

Of course, while the Quran, in its revisionism, does retroactively refer to some pre-Islamic people (especially slaves of Allah) literally as Muslims, and does eventually order the later kind of Muslims (i.e., Muhammad's Muslims) to fight and conquer the Jews (9:29), neither of these points establish that the parenthetical insertion there should be "Muslims".

I'm going to post a few resources for the Quran and commentaries, which might be useful:

Some of the weirdest verses about the Jews and the People of the Book in general are these (from my notes):

2:146 – some People of the Scripture know Muhammad’s revelations are true, but they cover it up

Hilali and Khan (the insertions are theirs): "Those to whom We gave the Scripture (Jews and Christians) recognise him (Muhammad SAW or the Ka'bah at Makkah) as they recongise their sons. But verily, a party of them conceal the truth while they know it - [i.e. the qualities of Muhammad SAW which are written in the Taurat (Torah) and the Injeel (Gospel)]."

-also see 3:70-71, which claims that some of the People of the Scripture know Muhammad is a true prophet, but they cover up this truth.

5:68 – what Muhammad reveals to the People of the Scripture increases their disbelief

Hilali and Khan (insertions are theirs) "Say (O Muhammad SAW) "O people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians)! You have nothing (as regards guidance) till you act according to the Taurat (Torah), the Injeel (Gospel), and what has (now) been sent down to you from your Lord (the Qur'an)." Verily, that which has been sent down to you (Muhammad SAW) from your Lord increases in many of them their obstinate rebellion and disbelief. So be not sorrowful over the people who disbelieve."

10:94 – “if thou (Muhammad) art in doubt concerning that which We reveal unto thee, then question those who read the Scripture (that was) before thee”

One component of their hatred for Jews and Christians that the Muslims subconsciously know they've been sold a bogus product.

If the Muslims really have got the best goods in the spiritual supermarket, then why do they need to get so paranoid about the competition?

If you're selling sliced bread, then you don't need to sabotage the bakeries and distribution networks of the crusty loaf producers to market your stuff. Or hire goons to beat up anyone seen returning from their shopping carrying a baguette.

Behind all the bravado and supremacism, the Muslims don't have much faith in the real sales potential of their goods - if they were ever to let the consumers have a free choice.

"(2:146. Those to whom We gave the Scripture (Jews and Christians) recognise him (Muhammad or the Ka`bah at Makkah) as they recognize their sons. But verily, a party of them conceal the truth while they know it ـ ﴿i.e., the qualities of Muhammad which are written in the Tawrah [Torah, a.k.a. the first five books of the Bible] and the Injil [the Gospels] )."

-- Parentheses in original. Brackets mine.

The claim that the Jews thought Islam was true, but were intentionally concealing their knowledge, is one of the themes in the following Jordanian/Saudi Arabian soap operas:

Because of the profoundly evil qualities of the antagonists in those soap opera episodes, they are quite fun to watch -- until you realize that the episodes are based on the Qur'an, are not meant as fictional, and demonize an actual people, the Jews.

To be Muslim requires a person to engage in cognitive distortion which denies reality. This gives rise to all the "explanations" about Jews that are printed above. Islam forbids self-reflection/introspection/critical thinking. When Islam meets other systems there is mayhem because the Muslim, having held on to ridiculous beliefs for so long and in such an entrenched manner cannot give them up or bend even a little without his whole house of cards threatening to tumble. He can see that the world is very different to what the Koran says, that there are more Gods than his allah and those Gods seem to take better care of their followers than his allah does of him.

He is perniciously jealous of Jews because he is required by the Koran to hate them in order to emulate his prophet as the perfect specimen of manhood. But he can see that Jews are beloved of God. He can see them succeeding, often against the odds, whereas he is still stuck in the dark ages.

Muslims are told by their prophet that they are the chosen of allah, and yet they are beaten, time and time again by Jews!

The will of allah can never be questioned but at some unconscious level Muslims may well ask if they are the chosen then why does their allah let them be resoundingly beaten again and again by a people who according to their allah, he has cursed? They dare not question their allah and be angry with him/her/it so they deflect their rage at kufar, and particularly at Jews.

Revolting though Islam is, the reaction of Islam to kufar provides one way to overcome them once and for all. That is to remind them whenever we can of Jewish and other successes compared with Muslim lack of success and keep asking the question again and again in as many creative ways as we can think of - "If your allah loves you and hates Jews why are the Jews so successful?"

This quote collection looks like is it from The Prophet of Doom site. http://prophetofdoom.net/Islamic_Quotes_Jews.Islam

One of the problems with using those second-hand quotes is that the author of that Prophet of Doom site has altered some of the quotes, resulting in some errors.

I find it is safer to go with a translation that is widely accepted, and I usually check some tafsirs before using the verses.

Anyways, the author of the Prophet of Doom site explains why he makes some modifications to the quotes:

"When quoting from the Qur’an and Hadith, I have elected to use a blended translation. No language transfers perfectly—one word to another. Five of my twelve translations of the Qur’an were combined to create the most accurate conveyance of the message possible. For clarity and readability, I have trimmed unruly word patterns and meaningless repetitions, being careful not to alter the meaning or message of any passage. Insertions within parenthesis (like this) were added by the Arabic translators to fill in missing words or to clarify the text. Insertions within brackets [like this] represent my observations."

This may be, but it's undermined by their PC MC, by which they reflexively privilege the Poor Muslim Oppressed by the Evil Apartheid State, Israel. In this sense, it's less a matter of antisemitism than of anti-white anti-Western: Yes, for PC MC, the Jew has become the Honorary White Westerner who, whenever he has a state that rules over Brown People (particularly the #1 Ethnic People of all, Muslims), that Honorary White Westerner cannot help but become an "Oppressor" practicing various forms of "discrimination", "bigotry" and "racism" against those hapless 3rd Worlders under his rule.

Israel has easily and massively been slid into the role of the New South Africa practicing an apartheid which must be curtailed or stopped somehow, by international pressure and opprobrium if nothing else. Meanwhile, its Muslim "victims" remain innocent and any bad behaviors they may exhibit are all chalked up to the "desperate measures" they are forced to take, due to their horrible oppression. Etc.

Then on top of that, we have the irony of countless Jews themselves as Westerners unremarkably succumbed to PC MC, who agree with this ridiculous view. The toxic shame and self-hatred of the PC MC Westerner for his own West has its own subcultural subset in the self-hating Jew.

When a few e-coli cases happen, the USDA shuts down all beef production and/or distribution for a time in order to sort out the problem & threat. The vast majority of beef during such shut-downs are “innocent”. What possible concrete relevance, then, does Spencer's protestation have that there are “millions of Muslims who are not interested in, or even aware of, the jihadist agenda”? That would be like a consumer activist who otherwise spends all of his time documenting the dangerously lax standards of the beef industry also, out of the other side of his mouth, saying with reference to a beef shut-down to protect consumers, that there are “millions of beef products that are completely safe”. What's the point in saying that, when there are times and situations when you have to treat ALL beef as a potential threat?

Read it, as Spencer would say, all.

(Note: In the comments section there, the reader will also find much useful expansion of my theme by me in dialogue with readers there.)

Concerning hatred of the Jews, it is, as Shakika notes, a subset of the universal hatred for non-Muslims in general.

In the Koran, Abraham, the Patriarch of Israel and of all Jews, is given the title of uswa husana ("an excellent example") because of his willingness to follow Allah -- but, that honorific title is threatened to be taken away from Abraham if he continues to indulge in "forgiveness" for his father who remains a pagan. I.e., the message is clear: in order to be a good follower of Allah, you must hate your own father if he doesn't agree with your new Truth.

Thus, Koran 60:4 essentially says:

"We have an excellent example of what it means to be a faithful follower of Allah (i.e., a good Muslim) in Abraham, because he said to those who do not follow Allah -- "Between you and us there is eternal hatred". But Abraham is not an excellent example when he slipped up and forgave his own father."

This is the Satanic mirror-image of the Golden Rule and by extension of Christ's salvation. It is the Devil's Silver-tongued Rule of Islam.

Being Anti-Zionist is being anti-Jewish and anti-Semetic. Period. Think about it for a minute......when you hear someone say that they have nothing against Jews or Judaism but oppose the "Zionist entity" this is really what they are saying: That of all the peoples and nations of the world only the Jews have no right to self-determination. Only the Jews have not right to govern themselves but rather MUST remain at the mercy of other people and other nations. Jews MUST be condemned to eternal statelessness - for whatever reason strikes your fancy at that particular time - because they cause trouble, because they're greedy, because they're deceitful, because they deny Jesus was the son of G-d, etc., etc. ad nauseum. Those Jews who oppose Zionism are nothing more than the classic "self-hating Jews". They curse their origins and wish for nothing more than to be part of a majority where it is safe. Many turned and still turn to socialism and communism as a panacea for their plight because under these systems (at least theoretically) everyone is considered equal to everyone else and there is no more reason for discrimination. This is a direct result of cultural and religious exhaustion, pure and simple. Many other Jews have substituted "social justice" and "progressivism" for the true tenets of their faith. They are misguided in my opinion. And if they accept progressive ideology as their new faith then they must abide by the tenets of that new faith. One of these central tenets is anti-Zionism. They cannot be both progressive and a Zionist. Support for Israel and Zionism is blasphemy to the Left and the punishment is excommunication.

In the quran, surah 10:93 and surah 17:104 say that allah gave palestine to the jews. Is that why islamic armies/terrorist are always defeated by IDF?

surah 10:93 And certainly We lodged the children of Israel in a goodly abode and We provided them with good things; but they did not disagree until the knowledge had come to them; surely your Lord will judge between them on the resurrection day concerning that in which they disagreed.

surah 17:104 And We said to the Israelites after him: Dwell in the land: and when the promise of the next life shall come to pass, we will bring you both together in judgment.

anjWho gives a damn about the Torah? Do japanese need a Shinto justification to be a sovereign nation ? Do Germans need a Lutheran Biblical justification for their nation to exist ?So why suddenly you demand that jews provide you with some sort of religious mumbo-jumbo in order to justify their national aspirations ?I am an atheistic israeli. Why should I give a damn about any of this nonsense at all ?

As much as you don't want to acknowledge it, Kafir, Jews are not every other nation. Unless we start self actualizing, and stepping up in the way we're meant to, there won't be peace for anyone. The religious mumbo-jumbo can remain that, or the Torah and what it's asking us, can be used to shape us into kind and thriving humans, whole and powerfully real, who can teach the world how get back to where we all want to be. If you're in Israel, you're lucky, since there are plenty of Torah teachers there that are definitely NOT about mumbo jumbo. I just returned from a visit there, though, and I was so broken to experience how lost we seem to be now. The most basic principals that we are all brothers and sisters and we need to treat everyone with respect and dignity seem to be forgotten again. That's why the 2nd Temple was destroyed, and unless we can figure out how love each other, even when we disagree, what good can come from us?

Ah Jesus follower! I've been away a few days and your'e running your mouth! Let's get your education started:muhammed was one of the names of the prophet of islam! What are his other names, in Islamic theology????

Kafir! Don't all Jews follow the thalmud and Torah as a way of life! You are athiest then fair dues! So you cannot be called a follower of judaism.You are Israeli. Which kind of makes your argument for Zionism nonsensical!

Oh, wait a minute now anj... could it be that you don't know the name of mohamad is mentioned in the Torah?! Is that why you are pretending to refuse to answer me, when in fact you know no better than I do??

Come on pure muslim, where in the Torah is the name of mohamad mentioned?

I agree with Bill. If the anti-Jew, anti-Christian Koran texts are seen as coming from Satan/Allah, they make more sense. Satan is jealous of God and His people and uses Islam, for one, to do his dirty work. The problems between Muslims and Jews/Christians runs deeper though. The Bible gives us some insight into why there are such hostilities and where this is going. Here's a brief outline.

When Lucifer/Satan tried to overthrow God's Heavenly reign and was booted out of Heaven he turned against Adam & Eve who were given authority over Earth. They were tempted and sinned and were judged by God. Satan then took the Title Deed to the Earth. God promised a Savior would come into the world to redeem fallen man and Satan knew this. To prevent this Satan knew the ethnic group of people through whom the Savior would come into the world must be destroyed. This is why Israel/Jews have been under constant attack from its birth as a nation; the Savior/Messiah would be a Jew and to kill all Jews would destroy God's means of sending The Savior. One reason why God forbade the Jews from marrying those who did not embrace their God, [Pagans], was because it would pollute the DNA of the seed that would produce a Jewish Messiah.

See Satan's attempts to destroy the Jews in Exodus 2 etc. See also the conflict between Abraham's sons Isaac and Ishmael.

1 Chronicles 21: 1And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.

Satan still stands up against Israel and is trying to provoke God by tempting Israel to sin. This is why the Holy Land issue is so vital. Satan is trying to destroy the very place to which the Bible says Messiah must return. If he achieves this he wins, and in so doing proves God was not able to deliver on his Word!

Any Christian who holds to Replacement Theology [RT] or anyone who insists Israel is not for the Jews is aiding and abetting Satan!

Nope. Jews who are not following the ancient mumbo-jumbo are still jewish ethnically and culturally and religion is not a factor here.

(Yeah, I know that now some religionist nutjob will come with the "argument" that I'm some kind of a "fake jew" or something, because I reject the dogma of Judaism. Oh, whatever. I don't give a damn. :) )

The devil hates God. The devil caused man to sin, to die and to hate God. Jews are the Sons of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, whom God chose to be His people and to bring forth the true Messiah. The devil cannot stand the thought of God and God's people succeeding. People who do not believe in God, even Jewish people who don't believe in God cannot understand the light of God which He lights in the lives of those who believe and TRUST Him. "In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."

we generally dislike things very foriegn to us, especially things we can never understand. So it is with the devil regarding God's light, regarding God's chosen people the Jews, and regarding God's Savior sent to save them and all who believe: Jesus!

John 1 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 The same was in the beginning with God.

3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.

8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

Again, who cares ? It's a movement for national independence. Do japanese look for shinto justification of their national independence ? Do finns look for religion in their Suomi patriotism ? (Well, besides saying "Perkele!" all the time. Heh!) Do german, russian, chinese patriots always look in their "holy books" to back up their national aspirations ???Don't be ridiculous.

Appropriate to this topic might be this short piece from the Book of Mormon (2 Nephi 29).

1 But behold, there shall be many—at that day when I shall proceed to do a marvelous work among them, that I may remember my covenants which I have made unto the children of men, that I may set my hand again the second time to recover my people, which are of the house of Israel;

2 And also, that I may remember the promises which I have made unto thee, Nephi, and also unto thy father, that I would remember your seed; and that the words of your seed should proceed forth out of my mouth unto your seed; and my words shall hiss forth unto the ends of the earth, for a standard unto my people, which are of the house of Israel;

3 And because my words shall hiss forth—many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible.

4 But thus saith the Lord God: O fools, they shall have a Bible; and it shall proceed forth from the Jews, mine ancient covenant people. And what thank they the Jews for the Bible which they receive from them? Yea, what do the Gentiles mean? Do they remember the travails, and the labors, and the pains of the Jews, and their diligence unto me, in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles?

5 O ye Gentiles, have ye remembered the Jews, mine ancient covenant people? Nay; but ye have cursed them, and have hated them, and have not sought to recover them. But behold, I will return all these things upon your own heads; for I the Lord have not forgotten my people.

6 Thou fool, that shall say: A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible. Have ye obtained a Bible save it were by the Jews?

7 Know ye not that there are more nations than one? Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, have created all men, and that I remember those who are upon the isles of the sea; and that I rule in the heavens above and in the earth beneath; and I bring forth my word unto the children of men, yea, even upon all the nations of the earth?

8 Wherefore murmur ye, because that ye shall receive more of my word? Know ye not that the testimony of two nations is a witness unto you that I am God, that I remember one nation like unto another? Wherefore, I speak the same words unto one nation like unto another. And when the two nations shall run together the testimony of the two nations shall run together also.

9 And I do this that I may prove unto many that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; and that I speak forth my words according to mine own pleasure. And because that I have spoken one word ye need not suppose that I cannot speak another; for my work is not yet finished; neither shall it be until the end of man, neither from that time henceforth and forever.

10 Wherefore, because that ye have a Bible ye need not suppose that it contains all my words; neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written.

11 For I command all men, both in the east and in the west, and in the north, and in the south, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall write the words which I speak unto them; for out of the books which shall be written I will judge the world, every man according to their works, according to that which is written.

12 For behold, I shall speak unto the Jews and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the Nephites and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the other tribes of the house of Israel, which I have led away, and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto all nations of the earth and they shall write it.

13 And it shall come to pass that the Jews shall have the words of the Nephites, and the Nephites shall have the words of the Jews; and the Nephites and the Jews shall have the words of the lost tribes of Israel; and the lost tribes of Israel shall have the words of the Nephites and the Jews.

14 And it shall come to pass that my people, which are of the house of Israel, shall be gathered home unto the lands of their possessions; and my word also shall be gathered in one. And I will show unto them that fight against my word and against my people, who are of the house of Israel, that I am God, and that I covenanted with Abraham that I would remember his seed forever.

God speaks, and the wise man takes note. If it is of God it will prosper and he will confirm his words by both deed and the witness of the Holy Ghost to those who ask in sincere prayer.

God bless and direct you in your quest for knowledge and understanding. Stay safe.

Just as an aside; Did you know the Apostle Orson Hyde was sent by the Prophet Joseph Smith Jr into the Ottoman Empire and to Jerusalem to dedicate the land of Israel for the restoration of Israel? To initiate the return of Israel to the land of their fathers, not just the Jews (Judah) but all the twelve tribes. He did this in the late 1830's or early 1840's CE on the Mt. of Olives.

From the Book of Jeremiah, chapter 23:

3 And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase. 4 And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the Lord. 5 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. 6 In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord Our Righteousness. 7 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say, The Lord liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; 8 But, The Lord liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land.

@Traeh: I did not mean to imply that all progressives are antisemetic. What I tried to convey is that the nuanced language is something that has been done by progressives. I certainly know many liberals who are very pro-Israel and friendly to Jewish people.

However, aside from the very far right - who by nature dislike anyone who isn't like them - progressives seem to be far more aligned against the Jewish people and Israel. The funny thing is that wasn't always the case. Prior to the 6-Day War, Israel was the darling of the left. But once they decided to defend themselves (and succeed), they were no longer considered the underdog.

Since Israel no longer needed progressives to feel sorry for them, they began the enemy of the left (as the Palestinians became the new darlings of the left). It only shows the feckless nature of (many) progressives.

It is that Muslims have perfectly memorized all the Koran since the 7th century.

The Case of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem

It was built in 691.It has Koranic verses.

Those verses are basically the same as in the Koran,but not word for word.

ONE REASON GIVEN

That it is an Eastern custom to paraphrase.

That is true.But why paraphrase the Koran if millions,including the caliph who built it,had memorized it perfectly?

It makes no sense,if you know something by heart,why give a variant version,er,your own words, in what you consider holy ground?And it was a major edifice,not an obscure monument in an isolated region.

Higher criticism of the Bible led many astray into agnosticism, atheism, and twisted interpretations that mixed Marxism with Christianity trying rationalize their understandings throughout the latter 19th and 20th centuries. When dealing with sacred things it is wise to tread carefully, thoughtfully. Many may mock, after all, even in Paul's time many thought Christians fools for their strange beliefs. There is much, much more to the Book of Mormon than its critics will concede. I wasn't raised LDS (Mormon), but came to it through much study and observation. More than any other denomination, amongst Mormons, I saw those who sought to preach "do as I do", not "do as I say." I have since appreciated the fruits of obedience to the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ that I have both seen and experienced.

To each his own, and God will judge us all by what we have learned, what we have done with what we learned, and what of his gifts we have accepted or rejected. I hope your path brings you the joy and happiness that I have found along mine.

"The funny thing is that wasn't always the case. Prior to the 6-Day War, Israel was the darling of the left. But once they decided to defend themselves (and succeed), they were no longer considered the underdog."

That's putting the phenomenon a little too simply. You might be interested in my short essay on this very subject:

"Shabir Ally is a Muslim debater who says Jesus fainted on the cross,he never died at all."

As you probably know, Shabir Ally didn't just make this up out of thin air. It's straight out of the Koran -- 4:157:

[The Jews say] We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger - they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them...

Other translators, such as Palmer, palpate the Arabic perhaps helpfully, thus:

"...they did not crucify him, but a similitude was made for them..."

Or the translator Sale:

"...they slew him not, neither crucified him, but he was represented [by one] in his likeness..."

We thus see that Koran 4:157 bears remarkable resemblance (pun intended) to the ancient Christian heresy called "Docetism" which believed precisely the same thing -- namely, that Christ was not really crucified on the cross, but a "double" was fashioned by God and put in his place, to fool people.

Docetism preceded the rise of Islam by several centuries, and no doubt perdured but later went increasingly underground, as a more powerful orthodox hegemony was less and less inclined to tolerate such bizarre speculations.

Interesting, "Docetism" comes from the Greek verb dokeo, which means "to seem" or "to appear" but not really be -- just as Koran 4:157 uses the verb concerning Jesus on the cross that he "appeared" to be there.

The first few centuries A.D. were a vibrant and often confusing ferment of different opinions about Christianity, with heresies pullulating left and right, and an orthodoxy struggling mightily to stamp some order into the situation. All over the Ecumene (and Arabia was just barely part of that Ecumene, even as North Africa was solidly included in its increasingly Judaeo-Christian culture particularly after Constantine in the 4th century), various heretical individuals and groups jockeyed and mingled. It's not unreasonable to assume that many such heresies made their way to Arabia, and that the Christianity encountered by Arabs during the time of Mohammed (and before) was at the very best a mish-mash of heterodox and orthodox.

Anj, Keep reading...Deuteronomy 18:20 But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.

What happened to Mighty Mo? Didn't he feel like someone cut his aorta? Hmmm, what did he say would happen to him if he was a false prophet again?

Clearly the term 'Zionist' has a many faceted aspect to it but I believe you have correctly placed it in your heading.

The Political meaning of Zionist is understood by those who hate the Jews and Orthodox Jews as a 'terrible thing' and to be hated. They believe all Zionists to be secular and not true Jews so that is why that person said what she said.

They also believe that the Jews are still under punishment from God and do not deserve a homeland until God forgives them. I'm dealing with that argument on Sodahead right now.

HERE IS A STATEMENT MADE BY THE PERSON I'M TALKING TOO:

"It is glaringly apparent that YOU don't get it. israel is not about the so called self appointed chosenites. thats an excuse. israel is about zionism which has NOTHING to do with Judaism.

Its clear you are just another shill for Israel, There is NO Jewish homeland.

Traditional Jews do not support Zionism (the return to the land called "Israel") and why the Zionist idealogy is totally contrary to traditional Jewish law and beliefs and the teachings of the Holy Torah."

Torah Jewry has never ever recognized the Zionist state. Since the Zionists succeeding in establishing their state, Torah Jewry has continuously announced to the world that the Zionists do not represent the Jewish people, and that the name "Israel" that they use is a forgery.

For as has been stated above, it is forbidden to us from the Torah to rebel against the nations, and all sovereignty by us is prohibited. Rather, we await the days when all the world will recognize the sovereignty of the Creator, and the words of the prophet Isaiah will yet be fulfilled:

"And they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. No nation will lift its sword against any other, nor will they learn warfare anymore."

Ruth, by embracing the same God would have been considered a Jew. She married a Jew and worshiped their God. Her lineage is proof of this.

To further understand what I'm getting at you should read Exodus 2. The Egyptians wanted to kill the male babies. They kept the females alive. What to you reckon would have become of them once they grew up? No Hebrew husband = pagan offspring!

Just to throw in a freebie here.

Read Exodus 2 and Matt 2. Once again the male babies are to be killed. This was Satan's attempt to kill the Redeemer. My point is this. Deut. 18 talks about a Prophet like unto Moses who would come into the world. Since this assassination attempt was aimed at Messiah, just as it was against Moses, how say Muslims that Muhammad was the fulfilment of Deut. 18? Muhammad was never targeted like this!!!

1. You seem to be moving away from the DNA argument, good. Because though Ruth became a convert her DNA was still Moabite DNA. So I submit to you that this has nothing to do with DNA. Leave out the DNA argument and we are in agreement here.

2. You say: No Hebrew husband = pagan offspring! What has this got to do with the price of tea in China? Messiah was born of a jewish GIRL through the Holy Spirit. No man was involved, whether jewish or not.

3. You say: how say Muslims that Muhammad was the fulfilment of Deut. 18? Muhammad was never targeted like this!!! Mohamad doesn't qualify, not because he wasn't targeted, but because he was not jewish. The first part of Deut 18:18 says:

נביא אקים להם מקרב אחיהם כמוך

which translates to: A prophet will I raise for them from the midst of their brethren [who will be] like you...

To me it means that any prophet raised by God for the tribes of Israel back then, would come from their own.

"You seem to be moving away from the DNA argument, good. Because though Ruth became a convert her DNA was still Moabite DNA. So I submit to you that this has nothing to do with DNA. Leave out the DNA argument and we are in agreement here."

You need to read all of Ezra 9.

Ezra’s Prayer About Intermarriage

Ezra 9:1 After these things had been done, the leaders came to me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices, like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites. 2 They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them. And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness.”

"You say: No Hebrew husband = pagan offspring!... Messiah was born of a jewish GIRL through the Holy Spirit. No man was involved, whether jewish or not."

Agreed!

Q. Where did His blood line come from to prove he was the rightful heir [King of Israel] to the throne?

"You say: how say Muslims that Muhammad was the fulfilment of Deut. 18? Muhammad was never targeted like this!!! Mohamad doesn't qualify, not because he wasn't targeted, but because he was not jewish."

In the quran, surah 10:93 and surah 17:104 say that allah gave palestine to the jews. Is that why islamic armies/terrorist are always defeated by IDF?

surah 10:93 And certainly We lodged the children of Israel in a goodly abode and We provided them with good things; but they did not disagree until the knowledge had come to them; surely your Lord will judge between them on the resurrection day concerning that in which they disagreed.

surah 17:104 And We said to the Israelites after him: Dwell in the land: and when the promise of the next life shall come to pass, we will bring you both together in judgment.

Wow Hugh, it's amazing how you and I can read Ezra 9 and reach totally different conclusions. I don't see anything in the chapter that talks about activities or events that, to quote you, "pollute the DNA of the seed that would produce a Jewish Messiah."

In Ezra 9, I read about men from the Chosen People intermarrying and producing a bunch of mixed-breeds who didn't worship Adonai God in their lifestyle and allegiance, so that the distinction between them and the goyim (gentile nations) around them, is blurred. That was contrary to God's instruction to them: they were to keep themselves separate and holy, as a light unto the goyim. At no time dare I say, was "the DNA of the seed that would produce a Jewish Messiah" ever threatened of pollution. At least I personally can't exegesize Ezra 9 that way.

I don't have any issue with blood line. I do disagree with your equation that "no jewish husband" means "pagan offsprings". And the prime example is Jesus the JEWISH Messiah, born without input from any man, whether Jewish or not. Now back to the lineage concern, you yourself said that Ruth converted and was thus considered Jewish. Following your logic then, one day Tom or Chuck could convert too, right?

"It disturbs God when His people marry unbelieving pagans who worship false gods and entice His people away from Him into idolatry."

That sounds awfully Islamic:

2:221. "And do not marry the idolatresses until they believe, and certainly a believing maid is better than an idolatress woman, even though she should please you; and do not give (believing women) in marriage to idolaters until they believe, and certainly a believing servant is better than an idolater, even though he should please you; these invite to the fire, and Allah invites to the garden and to forgiveness by His will, and makes clear His communications to men, that they may be mindful."

Deut 18 17:19 is the prophecy!Acts 3 20:22 is a prophecy! What did god say to ishmail? Genesis 17:20Deut 33:2 another prophecy! Isaiah 21 13:17 another prophecysong of solomon 5 9:16infact this book is full of references! The one written by a reverend! Maybe you should look at www.alislam.org and see another article. Don't forget to take your illiterate rabbi with you!

And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."

"...like one of us," says Genesis. I don't see how "us" in that statement can be taken as merely the royal plural. If the statement had instead been,"like us," then that might be the royal plural. But it wasn't "like us." It was "like one of us." I don't see how one gets away from a sense of plurality within God there. Perhaps Jehovah or Yaweh is simultaneously one and many? I recall Catholic theologian and political economist somewhere musing that God seems to be a sort of community of beings, both one and many.

I've seen some Christian theologians argue that one can find the trinity implicit in a number of Old Testament statements in which God seems to be represented as plurality (as in Genesis 3:22 above).

Is the above verse part of a pattern to found in the Bible? Or is it an exception? From what I've seen, it's part of a pattern, but then I'm not a Bible expert.

By the way Greenforest, perhaps the first thought of many a Muslim is that polytheism is bad not on account of its truth or untruth, but because it is an insult to Allah, the "greatest."

"Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name."

There may be significantly more depths than at first appear in this business of God giving man the cosmic responsibility of "naming" things.

Today, we often think of a "name" as a quite arbitrary label, a word that need have no relation whatsoever to the nature or characteristics of the thing named.

But suppose that is not what Genesis 2:19 means by "name." Suppose that what 2:19 means by "name" is a word that names what a thing is, in other words makes conscious the thing's identity. For example a mere arbitrary label for the thing I'm typing on right now could be, say, "Ay9bn42." But a name in the sense of Genesis 2:19 would be, say, "a mechanical electronic computer," or some other concept that makes evident to me what it is I have before me.

Now according to Genesis 2:19, God put it up to man to name things. And whatever man called them, those were their names. The Bible seems to be saying that, although God created things, they did not have names until man gave them names.

But what does that really mean? Isn't it speaking of something profound? Isn't it saying that the consciousness that man brings to the world is not just his own? That it gives birth to something in the things themselves?

What am I trying to get at? Suppose the Bible is not merely saying that man names things. Suppose for a moment that the Bible means that man actually informs each thing of its own name, tells each thing its own identity, brings to it consciousness of itself, self-knowledge. Suppose things become aware of themselves through the consciousness of man?

That might sound odd, unless one considers that our consciousness is not merely our own, is it? We are an inseparable part of the cosmos. In us, the cosmos becomes conscious of itself.

Genesis was written prior to the sharp splitting of subjective and objective, self and world, that has taken place gradually over the last 1500 or 2000 years. For all kinds of reasons, that splitting was probably necessary to the evolution of consciousness, but while it may have helped us learn the distinction between matter and spirit (medieval alchemy had not yet grasped the distinction, and we are still learning it), and the distinction between self and world, the split also blinded us to the fact that consciousness precedes the split. Consciousness is neither subjective nor objective, and gives birth to both those concepts as to all other concepts.

The things men named were already what they were, but the things could not name themselves, could not identify themselves, could not come to self-consciousness, self-knowledge, until they did so through the souls of human beings. The cosmos, and each thing in it, can come to self-knowledge in us. Our consciousness is not something subjective. It belongs to the world too, though we are under the illusion that it is isolated within our skulls.

Genesis 2:19, in ascribing to man the prerogative of telling things their own names, indirectly expresses how the human being mediates the cosmos' own self-consciousness, its own self-knowledge.

...like one of us," says Genesis. I don't see how "us" in that statement can be taken as merely the royal plural. If the statement had instead been,"like us," then that might be the royal plural. But it wasn't "like us." It was "like one of us."

Before going too deeply into exegesis, you might want to nail down with more precision the sense of the original Hebrew, and couple that with any nuances the archaic English of the King James Bible may have had.

With such verses in the Old Testament, we have basically three alternatives:

1) they reflect the transition from henotheism to monotheism

2) they are simply the royal plural

3) they are prefigurations of the Trinity

It may not be possible in any given instance to definitively know; thus inviting either eisegesis or perhaps excessively conservative skepticism.

Boaz would not have married a Gentile if she [Ruth] had not embraced the God of Israel. Ruth became part of the holy seed [bloodline] through whom Messiah would come into the world. Christ would have to prove His credentials for claiming He was the King of Israel through His bloodline, i.e, "Son of David," making Him the legal Heir to the throne.

In Ezra 9 the Moabites were one of the peoples the Jews were not supposed to have mingled their seed with.

What do think Genesis 6 is about?

"Now back to the lineage concern, you yourself said that Ruth converted and was thus considered Jewish. Following your logic then, one day Tom or Chuck could convert too, right?"

Are you saying she was not considered Jewish?

Read Gen.34:

12Ask me never so much dowry and gift, and I will give according as ye shall say unto me: but give me the damsel to wife.

13And the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and Hamor his father deceitfully, and said, because he had defiled Dinah their sister:

14And they said unto them, We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to one that is uncircumcised; for that were a reproach unto us:

15But in this will we consent unto you: If ye will be as we be, that every male of you be circumcised;

16Then will we give our daughters unto you, and we will take your daughters to us, and we will dwell with you, and we will become one people.

17But if ye will not hearken unto us, to be circumcised; then will we take our daughter, and we will be gone.

Why can't you answer the question, with your own words and thoughts, without resorting to non-answers (If you were an X, you would understand...)? If I wouldn't understand it because I'm not an X, how do you persuade those of us who are not Xs to understand it?

The conservative philosopher Eric Voegelin (1901-1985), who respected Judaeo-Christianity and considered himself a Christian even though he never attended church (on his deathbed, he had his nurse read the Psalms in his native German to him), quoted approvingly from the great poet and philosopher Goethe:

As a naturalist, I am a pantheist; as an artist, I am a polytheist; as a moralist, I am a monotheist.

To which Voegelin added (to paraphrase), "It's not the numbers that matter; it's the underlying divinity."

This is not to say that Voegelin did not consider the development of monotheism an advance in human consciousness over polytheism (what he termed more "compact consciousness"); and consequently Christianity as a progression unfolding the noetic truths of Graeco-Roman philosophy further. On the other hand, Voegelin regularly warned the reader not to go overboard in imagining a radical break between the two phases.

Word symbolizes a defined integrated concept (of something) in the form of a single concrete.So of course words are not arbitrary labels or meaningless jibberish.But man does not share his consciousness with "things" which he identifies and defines conceptually. Man is conscious, but "things" are not. "Things" do not become self-aware. Not through the consciousness of man, not through anything. Identification and concept-formation can not transform things into self-aware objects with some kind of "artificial intelligence".

Also, man's consciousness is always and only his own. It's not an illusion. There's no such thing as collective consciousness, even in a collective of totally zombified and brainwashed groupthink fanatics.It's a man's personal responsibility to make sure that his consciousness is objective, rational, non-contradictory, reality-oriented. If for whatever reason he allows his consciousness to become detached (or "split") from the world and descend into confused subjectivism, illusory evasion and irrationality, he does so willingly and at his own peril.

"Man is conscious, but "things" are not. "Things" do not become self-aware."

While you're right about most things, there remains one little problem with your statements. Man himself is also a thing, among all other things. The ancient Greeks (among whom especially we consider the pre-Socratic philosophers) symbolized the cosmos (i.e., our "universe") as composed of ta onta -- translated as "being-things". Among these "onta" were rocks, plants, animals -- and humans.

So, since man is a thing among all other things, then we can indeed say that things attain consciousness -- not only consciousness of other things, but self-consciousness. The human is the one thing that does this; and since humans participate in the same cosmos they are conscious of, through this event of consciousness (and self-consciousness), the cosmos attains, through a "window" so to speak, consciousness. It's simple logic; though that logic nowadays has to penetrate through considerable overlays of philodoxy to recover the classic experience of reality.

Hesperado. This "little problem" you mention does not exist.Everything is a "thing", of course. But it should be obvious from the context that when I say "things", I mean "not human beings".What separates us humans from other organisms is our ability to formulate complex concepts and broad abstractions. Reason is a primary tool of our survival. Maybe there are other advanced sentient lifeforms elswhere in the Universe. We don't know yet.But so far, even if I repeatedly and in many languages say to a monkey - "you're a monkey", I don't expect that monkey to be surprized in the manner of "wow, I never knew!"I hope it's clear now.

As for the greeks, I'm kind of aristotelian, I suppose. Still, only vaguely so.

Judaism is DOS 6.22.Buddhism is Apple OS X.Atheism is an assortment of open-source Linux (Unix-based) distributions.Islam is a family of nasty viruses (Sunni - worm, Shia -trojan) designed to self-replicate, spread, and ultimately wipe out all your data, including BIOS.

The thing we have to keep in mind about Islam is that it is not some alien form, but is essentially some kind of Judeo-Christian heresy or hoax, combined with some elements of Arab tribal religions, plus the earthly goal of world conquest (by military means if necessary). Some of the worst elements of Islam are these:

-Religiously-based warfare ordained against unbelievers-Death penalty for blasphemy-Death penalty for apostasy or for encouraging apostasy-Death penalty for adultery-Death penalty for homosexuality-Death penalty for sorcery/witchcraft-An extremely hostile and irrational attitude toward polytheists and other unbelievers-Condoning slavery if not outright encouraging it-A fierce vision of torture and hell-fires threatened against unbelievers in the afterlife or in the end times (i.e., useful for scaring the children to become believers, or for justifying a variety of real-world policies).

In other words, Islam appears to be a seventh/eighth-century Arabian cobbling-together of some of the worst elements of Judaism and Christianity, and excluding many of the good parts of those religions, and apparently designed for raising fierce and committed warriors ("single-minded slaves of Allah") for the purpose of conquest and social control. Perhaps the elements of Arab lore and ritual were added, or else maintained, as a way of getting support from the various Arab tribes. Indeed, the whole thing seems to be a pretty crudely thrown-together concoction--so crude in fact that elements of rabbinical commentary [1] were plagiarized and inserted into the already-jumbled hodgepodge of the Quran and presented as "revelation" from Allah!

One of the key differences between Islam and its predecessors is that the earlier religions do not call for warfare against all of humankind who refuse the invitation to convert to the religion and its rules. While both Christianity and Islam call on believers to proselytize and to convert as many people as possible to the religion, only Islam backs this up with the threat of warfare if the unbelievers refuse to convert or refuse to be subjected to its system of rules.

Islam has within it numerous statements that almost openly admit to the contrived and fraudulent nature of the whole enterprise, e.g.:

“I want them to profess a single creed by which the Arabs will accept them as their leaders (tudina lahum biha) and the non-Arabs will pay them jizya.” Muhammad’s appeal to his Quraysh tribe. Cited by Patricia Crone, in God’s Rule, p. 367. Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, I, 227 -2.

...and the totalitarian impulse that motivates Islam is not necessarily or uniquely a religious one, but rather seems to reappear in societies throughout history. (Islam just happens to be the worst such system ever invented, though North Korea is pretty hellish in a smaller and more contained form). The most recent major non-religious cults of Muhammad-like personality, i.e., of Stalin, Mao, et al., were brutal totalitarian systems. Clearly there are some things about us humans--and I think the readers can fill in the blanks as to what those things may be--that lead to this sort of evil.

As for Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler and other modern equivalents of Mo, they did not openly attempt to become "prophets" and their loony books weren't called "holy" only because in the first half of the 20th century such an establishment of explicitly religious cults was clearly a bad PR move even for the most bizarre and daring crackpots. Latest fashion was all "revolutionary", "progressive" and "atheistic".

"Everything is a "thing", of course. But it should be obvious from the context that when I say "things", I mean "not human beings".What separates us humans from other organisms is our ability to formulate complex concepts and broad abstractions."

What you are formulating is the special quality of the thing we call "human". Just because an entity of a class has special unique qualities, that does not necessarily exempt it from the class. Further argumentation would be required to establish that. So far, it seems you are simply defining thing as an entity that cannot have reason, and once you find such an entity, you deny it status as a thing. But thus far you are doing so merely by fiat, not through any argumentation I can see. Occam's razor would lead us to conclude that among the class of thing, there is one of them that for some reason (pun intended) has developed the faculty of reason and consciousness.

Don't get antsy.Look up "The Analytic - Synthetic Dichotomy".Understand why is it wrong to confuse a "map" with "territory".Understand that language is a tool of structural cognition, but but the means of your language you can't impose your (fallacious)structure on reality. Realise that when you say "all conscious beings are things", it does not mean that "all things are conscious beings".

To get beyond the 4th grade, you must at least go beyond the pre-socratic greeks. And I strongly suspect that you will refuse to do it, since you are such a big fan of "classic experience of reality".

I'm OK with that, as long as it does not affect practical matters. But I don't think it's proper to confuse reality with "classic experiences" of it.

Realise that when you say "all conscious beings are things", it does not mean that "all things are conscious beings".

If you practiced (or knew at all) elementary reading comprehension, you would already know I realize that; for in my previous comments to you I indicated such.

For example, in my comment of Jan 11, 2012 06:03 PM, I quoted you --

"Man is conscious, but "things" are not. "Things" do not become self-aware."

Then wrote:

"While you're right about most things..." after that opening remark agreeing with you about most things then going on to speak of the one thing (the human) among all other things that has consciousness.

Subsequently, in my post of Jan 12, 2012 09:50 AM, after you persisted in your misapprehension, I wrote:

"....among the class of thing, there is one of them that for some reason (pun intended) has developed the faculty of reason and consciousness."

Well, I know that you deny evolution and you are some kind of religionist. I don't really care.I refer to the initial "theory" made by Traeh, according to which when you "name" something, it becomes "conscious" and "self-aware". This is pure lunacy. Rocks are not self-aware. If you want to defend this loony theory against all existing evindence of reality that points to the contrary, go ahead. But don't expect others to ignore reality.

If you think that just by classifying humans as "things" you have proved something, the think again.I can just as well "classify" your "arguments" as "repeated ejaculations". I don't think it's convincing though.Insisting on classification, while dropping differentiation will lead you nowhere, but to absurdities.Besides, sophistry is not why we are here on this blog anyway.

Re-reading Traeh's initial post on this subject, I see he is interestingly exploring the mystery of the paradox of consciousness and ontology, but seems to err at a certain point that botches that paradox.

He's on the right track when he suggest we consider

...We are an inseparable part of the cosmos. In us, the cosmos becomes conscious of itself.

He begins to stray, however, when he follows the tangent leading from this to the speculation

...that our consciousness is not merely our own, is it?

whose logic leads him to the error -- even if hypothetical ("Suppose...") -- that

...things become aware of themselves through the consciousness of man...

While his instincts are sound, in trying to find a way past the "sharp splitting of subjective and objective, self and world, that has taken place gradually over the last 1500 or 2000 years" (actually the split began in earnest with the facile Nominalist-Realist debate of the High Middle Ages, less than a millennium ago), his attempt to heal that split by positing a pantheistic pan-ontology goes too far in the opposite direction, losing the balance between where the mystery of the tension of existence is poised.

So, we can say that through the onton called "human being", the Cosmos with all the onta that compose it becomes conscious of itself; but we cannot extrapolate from that to some kind of declaration that the Cosmos as a whole, and each and every part of it, is thereby conscious, of itself or otherwise.

Furthermore, this consciousness that has mysteriously occurred and developed in this one part of the Cosmos called "human being" is not omniscient; it is experienced as partial and imperfect, setting up a tension of frustration and disturbance between the transcendence toward which it tends (and an omniscience logically entelechic thereof) and the mysteriously inherent limitations of our apprehension of it. Hence the various symbolizations of divinity throughout history, symbolizing the ultimate source and meaning of that whole of which we are a part and in which we participate, but only incompletely (even if the experiences and symbolizations of eschatology point to something more pleromatic yet unavailable in that existential-ontological context symbolized as "in this life" or "in this world").

I see yall getting behind Newt Gingrich's theory of Palestinians being a fake people... sad thing is there is a substantial amount of Palestinian Christians too who are dying but you neoconservative rednecks want Jerusalem to be populated with these big nosed, interest loving bloodsuckers. That the only way Jesus will return right, if all thoses big noses are in the area? Stupid, Israel sinks the US Liberty and the US doesnt retaliate? Israel is the only country in the world that doesn't declare how many nukes they have in their aresenal. Soon Iran will join Pakistan to counter them in that department...

surah 10:93 And certainly We lodged the children of Israel in a goodly abode and We provided them with good things; but they did not disagree until the knowledge had come to them; surely your Lord will judge between them on the resurrection day concerning that in which they disagreed.

surah 17:104 And We said to the Israelites after him: Dwell in the land: and when the promise of the next life shall come to pass, we will bring you both together in judgment.

What I do for a living has little to nothing to do with my talents and passions. I get paid as a typist/editor for boring fields; I get nothing for my fiction-writing and philosophical/political analyses.

"Before going too deeply into exegesis, you might want to nail down with more precision the sense of the original Hebrew, and couple that with any nuances the archaic English of the King James Bible may have had."

I might. Then again...

Just kidding. Absolutely right. All I did, I admit, was look at a dozen different English translations of the Hebrew. What I found was that most of them used some variation of "the Lord God said...'He [Adam] has become like one of us.' " That looks like it might mean God is both one and many.

Hesperado or Erich said,

"With such verses in the Old Testament, we have basically three alternatives:

1) they reflect the transition from henotheism to monotheism

2) they are simply the royal plural"

Seems to me the royal plural could only apply to the verse in question if most of the English translations are incorrect. They say, "like one of us."

Hesperado or Erich said,

"3) they are prefigurations of the Trinity

It may not be possible in any given instance to definitively know; thus inviting either eisegesis or perhaps excessively conservative skepticism."

Quite true.

You leave out a fourth possibility, which includes henotheism and Trinity but is not reducible to them, namely the idea I was putting forward as perhaps implicit in the verse -- that God is not just unitary but is simultaneously multiplicity. I mean the idea that monotheism and polytheism are not necessarily contradictory.

But you are right if you mean to say serious exegesis of the text requires much more knowledge than I possess. I'd love to speak to real experts about such questions, people who know the Hebrew text inside out and have considered the various interpretations.

I don't think the phrase "like one of us" necessarily means, as you imply, "like one of the many among our number"; it can also be a rhetorical equivalent of just saying "like us".

If your insistence on the interpretation is correct, then it would logically follow that the verse is saying that humans are like one particular god ("one" of us) among the many gods comprising the "us" -- but not like the other gods among that group. That would be rather odd. Which of the gods is man like? Fred? Zeus? Apollo? And why isn't man like the other gods in the group -- but only like "one" of them? I think, rather, one should relax the exegesis here and not insist on the literal, in order to avoid such oddities.

The fact that other translations have followed suit may just mean they don't see any reason to fiddle with the Hebrew colloquialism. Had they known people would seriously consider some kind of divine pantheon -- where only one particular member of that pantheon is being proclaimed to be "like" humans -- they may have readjusted the locution.

Hesperado, Having thought further about it, I agree that "like one of us" could be a way of extending the royal plural.

Also, as you say, under my earlier interpretation of the phrase, it could mean "like a particular one of us," which would indeed be an odd result.

But I note that "like one of us" could also indicate no such distinction among the members of that "us." For example when, say, a fraternity or other group initiates a new member into the group and someone says, "he's one of us now." In that usage, the person who says it obviously doesn't mean the new member is like one particular member of the fraternity. "Like one of us" in the Genesis verse could have a similar approach to plurality, couldn't it? "He's like one of us gods now." However, I don't insist it's likely, since I'm no biblical exegete. I'm just ruminating in my novice fashion.

I know that some much more serious Christian exegetes have claimed to find many similar indications of Trinity in the Old Testament and argued those could not be considered examples of royal plural.

Kafir Ibn al-Shaitan, you called something I said "lunacy." Perhaps it was a bit mad and went a bit too far.

The following comments are probably not going to be of interest to you, but having spent some time writing these responses to you, I'm going to give in to posting them. (I hope Liberated and others forgive me.)

You said,

"Word symbolizes a defined integrated concept (of something) in the form of a single concrete."

Depends what you mean by a "concrete." Do you mean that words only designate physical items?

You said,

So of course words are not arbitrary labels or meaningless jibberish.

Nowhere did I say that words in general are arbitrary labels or meaningless jibberish.

A name can be an arbitrary label. (That doesn't make it meaningless jibberish.) For example the name given an unborn child is often pretty arbitrary. The parents don't know the child yet, but they pick a name for it. As one gets to know the child, the name acquires a meaning.

But besides more or less arbitrary and randomly chosen labels, I was trying to point out another kind of "name":

"...imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name."

The kind of name to which Shakespeare above refers is not just the sort conjured by poets, however. When a scientist or any kind of disciplined thinker, philosopher, what have you, for the first time understands some as yet unnamed pattern or thing, the name the thinker gives it often directly reflects the nature of the thing or idea discovered. It is not a more or less arbitrary label, such as we give to an unborn child.

Kafir Ibn al-Shaitan, you said,

But man does not share his consciousness with "things" which he identifies and defines conceptually...Man is conscious, but "things" are not. "Things" do not become self-aware. Not through the consciousness of man, not through anything.

This is where you referred to "lunacy" on my part. I'd say you are partly right (about my "lunacy" and in what you say in the quote just above).

I would agree that artificial objects -- a chair for example -- do not have consciousness or become self-conscious. I would also agree that a boulder does not have consciousness. A boulder is not an integral unity -- it is just an aggregation, a conglomeration of things externally united.

But is all matter without any kind of consciousness? If we take a piece of iron, that again is not an integral unity. It's just an aggregation of what are called iron atoms. To get to the integral unity of iron, we have to go down to the level at which, if you break the thing apart, it loses its fundamental character. If you cut a piece of iron in half, the two pieces do not lose their fundamental character as iron. You have to go down to the level of the single "atom" of iron to get to the fundamental unity. If you break apart an iron atom, you no longer have iron. Thus the iron atom is not a mere aggregate. It is an integral unity, a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Now that is a form of matter that, while it doesn't have a bright awake consciousness like ours, and is not self-conscious, it does have some kind of link to a non-physical, mind-like reality that might be compared to the human mind in deep dreamless sleep. Alfred North Whitehead (the logician and mathematician who coauthored with Bertrand Russell Principia Mathematica) held similarly, that everything that is not a mere aggregated, accidental unity has some degree of noumenal or mental existence in addition to its physical component.

'Identification and concept-formation can not transform things into self-aware objects with some kind of "artificial intelligence".'

(Let's skip over "artificial intelligence." That refers to computers. I'm not talking about a series of on/off switches (as in computers) or other mechanical arrangements.)

Here's where your criticism of what I said seems warranted to me: It's true that a physical object does not retain an autonomous intelligence merely because an autonomous intelligence conceives the physical object in question.

So I thank you for challenging that crude attempt of mine to describe what I was trying to get at.

The sense in which I meant what I said is this. A human being is not just himself. A human being is himself plus his circumstances, his world. You are your body, but you are also what you observe around you. Including the objects you perceive and think about. You are outside yourself in the world. You are not hermetically sealed within your own mind. Nor is your mind hermetically sealed inside your brain or body. "You" do not stop at the boundary of your skin.

Insofar as you truly are outside yourself in the world when you perceive the world (if you were not outside yourself, that would mean you were aware merely of a subjective replica of the world in your brain), you are becoming one with the world as you perceive it. To say, "you are outside yourself in the world" is admittedly a paradoxical statement. How can you be "outside yourself"? That would seem to mean you are yourself on the one hand, and somehow simultaneously you are existing outside that self which you are. It's rather like saying you have two selves that overlap, one inside and one outside.

But what is the alternative? If we are not outside ourselves in the world, then it means fundamentally we know only states of ourselves. It means we do not have any direct contact with the outside, only with our internal self-enclosed subjectivity. An absolute division between subject and object is taken for granted. Epistemology -- how one can know the world -- then becomes a huge conundrum. Precisely because in the last half of the 19th century subject and object were conceived in great detail as hermetically apart, epistemology became almost the central problem of much of philosophy. Toward the end of the 19th century, various philosophers start to break out of Descartes' self-enclosed idealism, and Kantian subjectivism. And that continues through the early decades of the 20th century.

But Kant and Descartes are not the cause of that self-enclosure so much as symptoms of a long-term deep running historical process of the formation of individual awareness. The scientific revolution, in insisting upon and learning more and more to distinguish subject and object, was also a key part of the evolution of individual awareness. Interestingly, science and philosophy at about the very same time (the end of the 19th century) started to break out of the sharp split between subject and object. But the split had and has a certain usefulness.

After all, for individual awareness to come into its own, one must be able to distinguish self and world, spirit and matter. The slow formation of individualized awareness is a process that extends over thousands of years and has many phases.

In knowing, we know more than states of ourselves. We are outside ourselves in the world.

Notice also that in attention that is sufficiently one-pointed and focused, there is no consciousness of self, only of the object you are focusing on. You disappear. You become that object. Now if in that state you conceive/perceive something of the actual objective idea of that object, there is some sense in which that idea and that consciousness are completely independent of you. They are not merely in your brain. They are not merely inside you. To the contrary, you merely participate in them. I went too far in suggesting that self-consciousness emerges in the object as a result. But something does come alive (though not self-conscious) that is not exactly either you or the object, but a third, independent thing that exists between you and the object, and that lives in you and in the object and in the objective idea you perceive via the object.

Kafir Ibn al-Shaitan, you said,

"Also, man's consciousness is always and only his own."

I don't believe that the individual is an illusion to be got rid of in some higher state where the illusion entirely dissolves into a uniform spiritual sea.

Kafir Ibn al-Shaitan, you said,

"There's no such thing as collective consciousness..."

There is no "collective" consciousness -- but two people, for example two close friends, while retaining their two individualities, at the same time incarnate a third thing between them, and that third thing is more than just the sum of the two of them.

There is a non-physical world "encompassing" or "underlying" the physical one, and in that non-physical world each individual has its own absolutely unique shade of color, so to speak, and each color can to some extent overlap with the others. The individuality does not dissolve and disappear, but rather "sounds" along with other sounding individuals, and that "sounding" so to speak, is not just the sum of all those individuals. It is a being of some sort that they share that is born among them and is their unity, even as they retain their individual shades to the fullest.

"It's a man's personal responsibility to make sure that his consciousness is objective, rational, non-contradictory, reality-oriented."

"Objective." Yes, so long as one means striving for objectivity. One never perfectly attains it.

However, if by "objective" you mean you subscribe to a view that all is matter, and that knowledge is only objective if it uses quantitative methods to apprehend matter, then no, I don't think that's very objective.

"Rational" -- certainly. The world does approximately conform to rational ideas. But the world is not a perfectly rational, definable, finished, self-contained, closed logical system. Insisting on "rationality" is great, provided one doesn't imagine that the world perfectly conforms at any point to rational ideas of it. Furthermore, that would be a dead world.

"Non-contradictory." This goes with rational. Great, provided that one recognizes that the world's phenomena do not resolve at any point to the perfect clarity of a perfectly non-contradictory system. The real world is consistent and non-contradictory in general, but is also somewhat contradictory, ambiguous, vague, at numerous points.

"Reality-oriented." Yes, as long as one does not presume to be in possession of the whole of "reality." That which is "obvious" is often the most elusive thing of all.

Kafir Ibn al-Shaitan, you said,

"If for whatever reason he allows his consciousness to become detached (or "split") from the world and descend into confused subjectivism, illusory evasion and irrationality, he does so willingly and at his own peril."

Well, if he "allows" it as you say, then it's sort of tautologous to say he does so "willingly." Yes, at his own (and others') peril.

P.S. to Hesperado: thank you for your various comments on my initial comment that started this. I read all your responses and profited by them.

Hesperado, Having thought further about it, I agree that "like one of us" could be a way of extending the royal plural.

Also, as you say, under my earlier interpretation of the phrase, it could mean "like a particular one of us," which would indeed be an odd result.

But I note that "like one of us" could also indicate no such distinction among the members of that "us." For example when, say, a fraternity or other group initiates a new member into the group and someone says, "he's one of us now." In that usage, the person who says it obviously doesn't mean the new member is like one particular member of the fraternity. "Like one of us" in the Genesis verse could have a similar approach to plurality, couldn't it? "He's like one of us gods now." However, I don't insist it's likely, since I'm no biblical exegete. I'm just ruminating in my novice fashion.

I know that some much more serious Christian exegetes have claimed to find many similar indications of Trinity in the Old Testament and argued those could not be considered examples of royal plural.

S.98:6 Indeed, they who disbelieved among the People of the Scripture and the polytheists will be in the fire of Hell, abiding eternally therein. Those are the worst of creatures.

Muslim men can marry Jews and Christians but Muslim women are not allowed to marry them.

S.5:51 O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.

Islam inculcates a kind of conspiracy thinking -- about everything, and also particularly about Jews.

Their conspiracy thinking about Jews is comprised of the following beliefs:

1) Yahweh was Allah.

2) The Jews were chosen by Allah to be his people and spread His Guidance (i.e., Islam) throughout the world.

3) However, the vast majority of the Jews tended to be corrupt and wicked, and disobeyed Allah/Yahweh, among other things corrupting His Guidance's writ in the form of the Torah such that whatever truths were in there were severely compromised and obfuscated for centuries, leading succeeding generations astray.

4) A small handful of Jews obeyed Allah/Yahweh (mostly the OT Prophets), and they were therefore ipso facto Muslims, or proto-Muslims = followers of Allah's Guidance = Islam.

5) Jesus was the penultimate in a line of Good Jews who obey Allah, and he tried to bring Allah's Guidance to the Jews, and by extension to Mankind; but again, Jews and Mankind were too corrupt and wicked to receive it.

6) Finally, Allah said "Enough's enough: I'm sending my final Prophet who will be entrusted with my Guidance in the form of a book -- a book that will finally clear up what was obscured by the wicked corruption by wicked Jews and Christians of my previous books, the Torah and Injil; and which will form a people who will, by hook or by crook, spread my Guidance throughout the Earth until the Last Days when I will come along to, with the help of Jesus/Issa, clean up the mess of history definiively and throw all the non-Muslims into eternal hell, and place all my good servants in eternal Paradise."

7) Meanwhile, history chugs along, and, as you say, Jews obviously excel in all levels of life while Muslims flounder in their filth, toxic fanaticism, diseased hatred and inferiority on all levels of life.

8) Because of fanatically believing in #1-6, Muslims take the data of #7 and conclude that Satan (Shaytan) is helping Jews to excel, and that for mysterious reasons Allah is perhaps testing Muslims -- perhaps this humiliating disparity of Jews and Western Infidels being so obviously superior to Muslims is meant by Allah to be a motivation and inspiriation to FIGHT and KILL and DIE more (cf. Koran 9.111) for the cause of Allah, for Jihad. Otherwise, less active Muslims who decide not to explode (today) shuffle along with their Inshallah fatalism, blame the Jews and Americans for all ills of existence, and continue in various ways to contribute to the abject inferiority and sick pathologies of their societies.

Any other way of looking at the facts of reality is simply not possible for the vast majority of Muslims, stuck as they are in their mass psychosis that insinuates its dark and slimy tendrils deep into their psychic viscera choking nearly all the life of the heart and mind out of them with the help of profoundly dysfunctional families and surrounding society passing on the disease. And that's why they are, and have been for centuries, doing their damndest to make life for others Hell on earth -- in the process, of course, ironically doing the same for their own lives; but then, that's the real goal and delight of their true master, who is not Yahweh at all, but his aeonic nemesis, the Serpent, Lucifer, Satan.

Oh, man ...Traeh, thanks for your response.I just don't think that this is the right place for a philosophical discussion, so I will avoid the temptation.It is very interesting though.

Just a few minor points:

"Do you mean that words only designate physical items?"

Certainly not. Language is not structured this way."Words have meaning" should not be understood as "words designate physical items".

"The parents don't know the child yet, but they pick a name for it. As one gets to know the child, the name acquires a meaning."

Still, parents use that name to designate their particular child and not a random child. :)

"Let's skip over artificial intelligence."

Of course, since it's not available (at least not yet). I'm a techie geek, very interested in this, so I know that for a fact.

"Insisting on "rationality" is great, provided one doesn't imagine that the world perfectly conforms at any point to rational ideas of it."

The world doesn't conform. That's exactly my point.As Francis Bacon said: "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." Our rationality must conform to reality, not the other way around. Our mental "map" of the world depicts the "territory" (reality). Reality is the primary and our understanding of it is secondary. Whenever we have problems with our "maps", it doesn't mean that there's any problem with "the territory".

Also I admit that I'm not a Kantian subjectivist (but not a Randian "objectivist" either, even though she had many sound and hugely important ideas that I do respect.)

"There is no "collective" consciousness -- but two people, for example two close friends, while retaining their two individualities, at the same time incarnate a third thing between them, and that third thing is more than just the sum of the two of them."

But this is all about communication, isn't it ? Individuality isn't lost. Both friends still have separate minds.

What's a "non-physical" world ? You mean all that which pertains to our consciousness and often called "spiritual world" ?The yes, I agree (that consciousness exists).

"Objective. Yes, so long as one means striving for objectivity. One never perfectly attains it."

But we have to admit that adopting such a general direction in our attitudes is a noble and ultimately rewarding one.We don't have omniscience, of course. But being reasonable is a good thing, no matter what confused and despirited modern subjectivists and pseudointelletuals claim.

"Well, if he "allows" it as you say..."

Yes, because thinking is a personal responsibility. Just look at how many prefer not to think at all and live their disorganised empty lives according to their vague whimsical "feelings".(libtarded hippie subjectivists, various deranged cultists, etc.)No wonder that the world is so fucked up.

Robert Reilly attributes many Muslims' strong proclivity for conspiracy thinking to the rejection of reason by the Asharite school of Islam about a thousand years ago. The thinking of that school or extensions of that thinking became and remain predominant in the Sunni Islamic world. With the rejection of reason (and the equation of Allah to pure power and will) goes the rejection of cause and effect series in nature. Allah causes everything at each moment and is bound by no causal laws in doing so. Allah is not even bound by his own word in the past. Allah is bound only by his pure will, which determines anew at each moment what happens in the world. There are no causal chains in nature and the world. Into the void left by the rejection of natural cause and effect go numerous, endless, wild conspiracies promulgated by Muslims.

"Robert Reilly attributes many Muslims' strong proclivity for conspiracy thinking to the rejection of reason by the Asharite school of Islam about a thousand years ago."

I've noticed this particular asymptotic meme bandied about the anti-Islam movement: Islam was hunky dory once upon a time ("before the gates of ijtihad were closed", during its "golden age", blah blah blah), then subsequently became the Islam that plagues the world.

Pure horseshit, pardon my Arabic (or should I say camelshit). It's just another desperate way to save Islam from the utter condemnation and damnation it deserves from top to bottom, inside out, through and through, forwards, backwards, sideways, essentially, intrinsically, ontologically, absolutely, unequivocally -- until there is nothing left but the charred ashes and glop of categorical incineration.

What Reilly says is a bit different. As I understand him, he thinks the Asharite school is well-grounded in the Hadith, but that its grounding in the Qur'an is more of a maybe. Reilly does not pretend the Hadith don't matter in Islam. In his book he is far from saying Islam itself is hunky-dory. He doesn't say the whole problem is due to the Asharite school. Nor does he seem to think reform has much of a chance. And he doesn't claim the liberal Mutazilite school was as well-grounded in Islam as the Asharite school.

However I partly acknowledge your point and think there may be some truth in it. Still, even if his focus on the Asharite school is to a degree an example of the kind of BS to which you refer, his book and his thinking about Islam are fascinating and profound.

It's interesting that the first philosophical/theological school of the Muslims was that of the liberal Mutazilites. They were very influential and favored by ruling authorities, but only lasted a generation or two, before the Asharites rose and crushed them. The Mutazilites had said the Qur'an was merely created (not uncreated), and according to Reilly, they accepted reason as the ultimate arbiter, above religious revelation.

Reilly says the Muslims developed the Mutazilite philosophical/theological school basically as a reaction to Christian, Persian, and classical philosophy and theology in the great civilizations the Muslims conquered.

I would hazard that the reason the first philosophical school of the Muslims was accepting of reason is that the invading Muslims had been sufficiently innocent of and barren of philosophy that when they first really encountered it, among the Byzantine Greek Christians, the Muslims had little option but to imitate like children the rational spirit of what they encountered. They had little means to judge it or resist it, since they had no significant philosophical tradition of their own. But after that child-like initiation or first blush was over, the Muslims soon employed reason to attack reason. Thus al-Ghazali wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Thus and through similar cultural trends the Muslims of that time could revert to the spirit of their own revelation, which does not countenance freedom of thought. Thus the Asharite school and similar developments arose to suppress the Mutazilites, and reason committed suicide, aborting itself in its nascency.

In any event, Reilly, without being pollyannish about it, somewhere mentions Almuslih.org, and says it's a website where Muslims promote a return to the spirit of the Mutazilites. I haven't checked it out.

So far it's fascinating. I can't do it justice, but I'll give a brief summary of what I recall from a quick reading of the intro and first couple of chapters.

The author quickly reviews the great progress and shifts in scholarship and archaeology over the last few centuries with regard to what caused the "Dark Ages" and when they happened and if they happened.

Following on that review of the various arguments that have been made and the archaeological and textual data that has piled higher and higher especially in recent decades, the author presents a lot of evidence, in a very scholarly but very interesting way, that the Muslim invasions of North Africa, the Levant, Persia, Syria, and the Mediterranean realm, following Muhammad's death, were the cause of the Dark Ages in Europe.

It wasn't the end of the Western Roman Empire that caused the European Dark Ages. The end of the Western Empire didn't actually change things very much, nor did the invasions of Germanic barbarians, who largely integrated themselves into Roman culture and laws and customs and who after the end of the Western Empire saw themselves as representatives of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Archaeological and other evidence shows that classical civilization continued and economic life remained urban based and flourishing until around the time the Arab Muslims burst out of Arabia in the 7th century. It was around that time that all the archaeological and documentary indications of a serious decline emerge -- economic, agricultural, cultural. That was when classical civilization ended and the Dark Ages and the medieval period began in Europe.

For one thing, literacy and economic life declined drastically in Europe because the importation of papyrus from Egypt was cut off by the Muslim invasions of North Africa and by Muslim piracy on the southern European coasts. And contrary to the myth, it was not just Europe that fell into a Dark Age at the time of the first Islamic conquests -- but the areas of the Middle East and North Africa conquered by Islam entered a Dark Age at the same time. So much, it seems, for that Islamic Golden Age we keep hearing about.

In the late 9th century both Europe and the Islamic world began to emerge from the Dark Ages, according to the evidence of archaeology and the documents of the time.

In the 10th century, the author says, Islamic civilization is more advanced than the European, but based on what I've read so far, I'm pretty sure the author will at some stage in the book point out that the eastern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern areas conquered by Islam were also significantly more advanced, populous, and much wealthier than Europe before the Muslims entered and conquered those Middle Eastern lands. Thus the fact that they would emerge from the Dark Ages more advanced than Europe is probably due to the pre-existing advanced civilization in those places, which the Muslims had only partly Islamized by the start of the 10th century.

When you read the evidence presented by the author about the causes of the Dark Ages in Europe, it suddenly seems obvious. This book could be, or at any rate should be, a major paradigm shifter.

The first you probably knew before you began reading the book, and/or surely have learned by now from the author, but perhaps you didn't mention it for brevity's sake -- namely, that the overarching thesis of the book was first proposed by the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne back in the 1920s. Apparently, his thesis fell into disfavor by historians later on (I don't know how long later), so that by the time of the first decade of our century, even Hugh Fitzgerald would declare that the Pirenne thesis was no longer tenable. I recall patiently reminding Hugh that it was by no means a done deal, and that historians often undergo revisionism which subsequently turns back around in their favor with new evidence, etc. One metaphor of Pirenne's I particularly liked was when he said the Muslims had "turned the Mediterranean into a wall" -- where previously, and right up to the 7th century in an uninterrupted process of centuries, it had been a vibrant productive conduit of cultures and economies. (Indeed, the transformation by the Muslims of the Mediterranean into a hostile barrier was likely one major impetus for European eventually (after all, it takes a long time to stupendously progress as the West did slowly but surely throughout the Middle Ages) to discover the Americas -- for the East, which used to be a cross-cultural part of the West for centuries, even millennia, had become a perilous place to go when Muslims began establishing their networks of conquests (conquering Persia, India and great chunks of central Asia).

The second point I'd like to make about your post above concerns your apt description from the book, that:

"...the Muslim invasions of North Africa, the Levant, Persia, Syria, and the Mediterranean realm, following Muhammad's death, were the cause of the Dark Ages in Europe."

My point is just a reminder (if not for you, then in case some readers here don't realize this historical fact) that the entire Middle East and all of North Africa had already been an integral part of the Roman Empire -- both the pagan Roman Empire and the Christian Roman Empire (which began in the 4th century A.D.) -- for several centuries before the Mohammedans stormed out of the desert and began wreaking their pillage, rapine and brutal conquests. I.e., North Africa was already part of the West for centuries before Islam came along to tear it away (as they did Spain for a good 800 years). While the West never formally and definitively re-conquered the Middle East and North Africa (but, as they say, "never say never"), the West did become spectacularly progressive enough to at least colonize it beginning in earnest in the 18th century and increasing throughout the 19th and then early 20th centuries, providing those areas devastated (in every sense of the word) by the bleak monstrosity of Islam with at least a brief window of time and delimited geographical spaces (mostly urban) with some semblances of the free air of civil rights and intellectual and cultural opportunities; which, of course, the vast majority of the Muslims concerned -- from Indonesia to India to the Middle East to North Africa -- did not appreciate nor absorb sufficiently by which to wake up their souls to the normal human response of recoiling from and rejecting the spiritual, intellectual and psychological cancer into which they were born and in which they were inculcated.

Yes, Scott reprises several centuries of the evolution of the scholarly debate -- including the debate between Pirenne and opponents about whether the Islamic invasions caused the European Dark Ages. The Dark Ages are remarkably controversial. The mystery and dispute about them is exciting. We are talking about a time period not all that far away from us historically (the first millennium AD and, more narrowly, several centuries within that millennium), a period large and integral to the main trunk of Western history. It's really remarkable how undecided is the debate about major features of that time -- the Dark Ages -- such as what brought it about, when it started, when it ended, did it happen at all! It almost makes one feel as though one didn't have a solid narrative chain of previous events and history to "stand on," but rather only a mysterious wind blowing up and supporting one in mid-air over an immense dark void!

Scott, having reprised some main outlines of the history of the debate on the Dark Ages, looks at a wider field of evidence than Pirenne or his opponents down to the present seem to have done or been able to do. Scott argues that the wider field of evidence he presents -- and I can't detail it now as I'm still absorbing it -- shows that, minus certain important details of Pirenne's views, Pirenne was largely right, and his opponents have been wrong.

Good of you to remind us that North Africa and the Middle East had been part of the pagan, and later Christian, Roman Empires for centuries before Muhammad ripped those huge regions of the earth away from the West.

You spoke of the Muslim conquests transforming the Mediterranean into a barrier and becoming an impetus eventually for the discovery by Europeans of the Americas. Certainly a commonly cited reason for Columbus' desire to find in a western direction a new route to India, was that the Muslim conquest of Constantinople in 1453 cut off or made difficult the land route east to India.

"You say the map is secondary and the territory is primary. Is the distinction between map and territory part of the map or part of the territory?"

Both. The distinct nature of our human consciousness (sense-perception, concept-integration principles forming our intellect, etc.) is a part of the "territory" (reality).Our understanding of this nature is a part of the "map", of course.

Again, reality ("territory") is primary and science ("map") is secondary.

Great post once again. So informing about woman in Islam and their twisted fate. Funny enough the oppressed appear to enjoy oppression. Why are they still calling for Sharia Law here in the West!.

To those who doubted your apostasy in the beginning, your posts have now made your journey very clear to our hearts.

I am amazed by the darkness of this evil cult which billions follow.The ignorant and disregard of life itself regardless of gender. Woman being treated as second class brainless sex objects by these tribal men with long long ropes and some clean-shaved Osama in sheep skin. We need you to stay safe, so please take good care of yourself. Keep writting. God Bless you.